Yesterday Mike participated in his school’s Spring Musical Performance; all I can say is: who is this kid? I knew Mike had to say a sentence as part of presenting a song to the audience; many kids had similar tasks. That task tripled as the week went on, eventually having to say the lines for two of his classmates as well as his own.
This didn’t really surprise me; Mike has a large vocabulary. What surprised me though, was when the assistant musical director introduced herself to my wife and me, saying how impressed she was by how well he had done singing, dancing and speaking all week during practices.
For those who don’t know Mike, he is a ‘rock n roll’ guy; he doesn’t care for oldies, pop, dance, country or any other genre of music. He asks us to turn off the local Top 40 radio station in the car. He asks his mother to stop singing along to LMFAO. He runs out of the room if J-Lo‘s Fiat commercial is on TV, or at hits the Mute button on the remote control while plugging his ears with his fingers.
So after thanking her for the kind and complimentary words, we sat down to watch the show. The Rosemary Kennedy School is a large facility and part of Nassau BOCES, and I’ve written about them in previous posts. They put on a terrific show, often collaborating with a sister schools that have violinists, etc. This year they did it all themselves; one of his classmates even played drums on a couple of songs.

Here’s an example of the show:

Mike participated in 6 songs. Six!!! It wasn’t that long ago that he would sit amongst the crowd with tissues or ear plugs in his ears, and wanted nothing more than to get off the stage. Yesterday he was a cool customer: composed, followed cues, sang, danced and I think for the first time in a long time, really enjoyed himself. He didn’t flinch when his classmates sang off-key or moved in a distracting manner. He wore a corsage, and at certain parts of the show wore a top hat, sunglasses (above picture) and a cowboy hat and bandanna. Getting him to wear props and decorations were struggles in years past.

I was truly impressed by his performance! Too bad we didn’t get to yell “Encore!”

I didn’t even mind when the parents in the row in front of me were talking while he delivered his signature “Come on America, let’s Rock n’ Roll!” punctuated with a fist pump.

Okay I was a little annoyed, but that didn’t diminish Mike great performance.